#disabilty rights

[settlercolonialismisbad]

Change your brain to stop reaching for ableist language to describe your world

D*mb, st*pid, cr*zy, ins*ne, and many many more ableist words and phrases still dot our daily conversation landscape. This Disability Pride Month, show you’re listening by doing the work to use language that doesn’t perpetuate ableist culture.

This is a non-exhaustive curated list of terms and suggestions for replacing them in your vocabulary, as well as accompanying notes.

[neuroticboyfriend]

people don't have to be good in order to be allowed to exist. i say people "deserve" things a lot not because you need to be moral to have it, but because you need it - just because you exist. just because you're here. your rights, your wellbeing - you need that because you're alive, and that's all there fucking is to it. you need support. shelter. safety. care. love, if you want it. because without your wants and needs met, you suffer and you die.

i say people "deserve" these things, because despite what i just said, this society puts conditions on marginalized people's mere right to life. and they're wrong. they're fucking wrong.

[spacefinch]

YES

(I bring a sort of “Everyone has inherent worth regardless of their productivity” Vibe to every conversation that ableists don’t really seem to like)

[tabijozwick]

The stupidity of SSI rules

So, around the middle of May, I had the financial review for my SSI and according to them, Marshall and I made too much money for me to qualify for it. June's SSI was the last SSI payment that I received. Because of our work history, they said that I have an overpayment of over $13,000 that they expect to be paid off all at once.

Here's one little problem, because of their stupid SSI asset limit rules, I DO NOT have a spare $13,000 laying around, so my plan is to call my local office tomorrow to see if I can get some sort of payment plan to get it paid off.

Marshall believes that the SSI rules is set up that they want disabled people to rely ONLY on SSI, but with the way everything costs, it's impossible to live ONLY on disability benefits. In other words, they wanted to keep disabled people in poverty, not get them out of poverty.

To clarify, I am NOT asking for money, just ranting about how stupid the SSI system is set up, preferring to keep disabled people in poverty, not get them out of it.

[deliciousbelieverobject]

I'm begging you, pleeeaaase if you live with a physically disabled person and they tell you what would make the living space more accessible, DO NOT SAY "just ask me for help." I don't want to have to ask for your help dumping out yesterday's coffee grounds in the french press.. I want to be able to make coffee without having to ask for help every. single. fucking. day.. Like, why don't able bodied people not understand that asking for help to do every little thing fucking SUCKS?? Also, when I'm upset because my own home isn't accessible, don't get mad at me as if it's something personal towards you.. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. I'm allowed to be mad at the lack of accessibility my disability creates... Don't make it about you.

[ryanjudgesthings]

There's a mistake I see a lot of people in the mental health community make and in all honesty, it's one I've made myself. But I think we should really work on it. And that's saying "if this were a physical illness, wouldn't you care?"

I've learned that no actually, people wouldn't care. Katelyn Weinstein (theADHDprincess on Twitter) is a neurodiversity acceptance activist who really put this in perspective for me. She said that it's actually more an issue of longevity than physical vs mental health.

If you're having a bad day people will generally be understanding. But when you're experiencing chronic depression and you have many bad days people lose sympathy.

In the same respect people may be understanding when you've broken a bone that will heal properly or when you have a cold that will go away soon in ways they simply won't understand when you have chronic pain or need to use a wheelchair. They may send chicken soup for a temporary situation, but when you need consistent accomodations it's an entirely different story.

I understand that from our perspective it looks like people care more about physical health than mental health, but it's good to remember that our own perspective is also limiting. Facing ableism doesn't mean you can't be ableist. And I know so many people are not ill-intentioned when they say this. I know I wasn't. But we can't discount the lived experiences of physically disabled people. If we want true equality we need to be united and we need to listen to those with physical disabilities and illnesses. And those with physical disabilities and illnesses (some of which are also invisible) have said that they are not given proper accomodations either.

So let's be united and fight for equality and accomodations for everyone, no matter what their illness or disability may be.

[animalcopingnewhorizons]

😘

[ash-the-fluffy-cat]

Accessibility isn’t extra steps

they’re just the steps that you missed

[brandyschillace]

I turned in the book manuscript for INTERMEDIARIES, the forgotten history of the first transgender clinic 1918-1933.

It follows the story of Dora Richter, the first transgender woman to undergo complete MTF surgery (not Lili Elbe; she was third!) It’s taken me two years of blood, sweat, and tears. A lot of tears, actually.

The Nazis raided the Institute for Sexual Science; they burned the library. They banned the books that remained. They attacked, arrested, and ultimately killed trans and homosexual people along with disabled people, minority groups like the Roma people, political opponents, and 6 million Jews. (One commenter suggested 11 million people over all, and really, that estimate may still be conservative).

The news today, 2023, reads a lot like news in 1923 with the rise of hatred against LGBTQ, attacks on reproductive rights, and increasing racism and antisemitism. The Nazis rose throughout the 1920s, coming into power 1930-1933.

The world said never again; we must now be the ones to stop a slide into hatred and violence. Before it’s too late.

Here is a preview of the book; it will be available for pre-order this winter (I hope), coming out in 2024.

[settlercolonialismisbad]

y’know, posts that have alt text and video transcripts/captions are 1000% more likely to be shared when they come across my dashboard.

*finger guns*

[settlercolonialismisbad]

Also IQ has a super racist and ableist history and should not be used as a justification to change the circumstances of a single soul ever again. Nazis executed people with low IQ. IQ means nothing. It’s just another way to dehumanize real people and create a culture of neurotypical supremacy.

I’ve seen some people respond to governments restricting trans affirming care for autistic people with statements like “autistic people have higher IQs” and “I’m autistic and I have a biology degree” and I’d just like to say that autistic trans people with low IQs and no degrees also deserve to medically transition should they choose to do so.

[spoonie-support]

[olisix823]

Happy Disabled Pride month!

[chronically-evie]

my mom keeps trying to get me to go to the ER when im having a flare up and i have no idea what to tell her.

because ive BEEN to the ER before. you wanna know what they did? while i was sweating, shaking, and sobbing, curled in a ball of pain?

they asked me if i was on my period. when i told them no, they asked me if i was pregnant.

when i told them no, because i wasn't sexually active, they forcibly tested me anyways, and then when it came back negative said, "well maybe you should just take a few deep breaths", gave me liquid ibuprofen, and sent me home.

disabled people, in this particular situation disabled afabs, are never fucking listened to.

the ER staff literally LAUGHED at me multiple times. they pointed at me when i was having one of the worst episodes of my life and snickered.

so no, i do not want to go to the fucking ER. my heating pad, ice packs, and nausea meds are going to help me more than anything a hospital could do.

[theacecouple]

TOMORROW!

October 23rd, 2024 is the 4th annual Disabled Ace Day!

Disabled Ace Day, which takes place on Wednesday during Ace Week, is dedicated to awareness, visibility, and celebration of the intersections of Asexuality and Disability and advocates for material and social support of Disabled Aces everywhere.

With a vitally important election coming up in the US, we will be talking politics tomorrow on the The Ace Couple podcast by discussing the laws that create marriage inequality in our country for Disabled people, for Asexual & Aromantic people, and for Black Americans.

Obergefell v. Hodges may have allowed for same-sex marriage at the federal level, but it does NOT mean that we have true marriage equality in this country.

We encourage Disabled Aces from around the globe to talk about your own experience, be it personal or political, to raise awareness this Ace Week.

Disabled Ace Day logo by Emmalee Larghi Dahlgren

[anim-ttrpgs]

Disabilities and Monsters in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Through a discussion with @vixensdungeon (great blog to follow for TTRPG stuff by the way) it came to our attention that some of our more jokey and memey posts and reblogs may have given some people a slightly skewed idea of what Eureka, and particularly the “urban fantasy” parts of Eureka are really about, and its tone. We like to joke around about it, and the “cute monster girl” angle really sells on tumblr.com, but actually playing these types of characters in Eureka is not exactly a power fantasy. They eat people, and often eat them alive. If you find that cute, funny, and/or sexy, well, Eureka is still probably just the game you’re looking for, but that isn’t the main thing. Eureka uses the fact that many of these characters necessarily subsist off the flesh and/or blood of other people as a loose metaphor for mental and physical disability.

Imagine you need something that everyone else has but you don’t. If you don’t have it regularly, you will literally start to waste away. The only way to obtain this thing is to take it from another human being, who also needs it, and others will deny that you need it, and abhor that you need it. It’s not uncommon for people, even “progressive” people, to say something along the lines of “they need to all be killed for the good of society,” even if they don’t realize that’s what they’re saying. You didn’t choose to be this way. This is the reality of monsters in Eureka, and many people in real life.

And then even when you have that thing you need, for now, there are many facets of society that you just can’t participate in because your condition makes them impossible for you, like if a vampire wanted to take a run on a sunny beach. Monsters in Eureka will be challenged by their supernatural weaknesses at every turn, while hiding their abhorrent needs from society and even the rest of the party, and asking why they have to be this way. Finding clever ways to get around and circumvent their weaknesses is a core part of the gameplay of monster PCs in Eureka. Imagine you and your friends want or need to go somewhere, but that somewhere is on the other side of a river. The river has a well maintained bridge. For everyone else but you, a vampire who can’t cross running water, getting across the river is the simplest task in the world, so much so that no one would even consider it a task, but for you, it’s a challenge, and for gameplay, it’s a puzzle.

It isn’t totally hopeless, as many of the jokes and fan comics show (those aren’t just memes, they’re only showing one side of the coin and not the other). Monsters who accept, or even embrace and celebrate their monsterhood, can and do exist canonically, alongside monsters who can’t bear to do what they do. In some cases, these may be the same monster on different days.

I’m going to conclude this post by posting two excerpts from the rules text itself.

Disabilities are Disabling

So why don’t disabilities grant any advantage? It isn’t too uncommon for RPGs to have some sort of “flaw” system, where during character creation you can give your character “flaws” or some kind of penalty, and usually get that balanced out by being able to add extra bonuses elsewhere. Sometimes, these “flaws” may take the form of disabilities.

One particular high-profile indie TTRPG takes this beyond just character creation, and makes it so that if a PC receives a “scar” in combat that reduces their physical stats, their mental stats automatically go up by an equivalent amount, and proudly imply that to make any mechanic which results in permanent consequences or makes disabilities disabling is ableist. We think you can probably tell what we think of that from this sentence alone, and we don’t need to elaborate too much. 

We do think, in the abstract, “flaw” systems in character creation are not a bad idea. They allow for more varied options during character creation, while preserving game balance between the PCs.

But in real life, people aren’t balanced. The events that left me injured and disabled didn’t make me smarter or better in any way - if anything, they probably made me dumber, considering the severity of the concussion! Some things happened to me, and now I’m worse. There’s no upside, I just have to keep going, trying harder with a less efficient body, and relying more on others in situations where I am no longer capable of perfect self-sufficiency.

A disabled person is, by definition, less able to perform important daily tasks than the average person. To deny this is to deny that they need help, and to deny that they need help is to enable a refusal to help. This is the perspective from which Eureka’s Grievous Wounds mechanic was written.

When a character is reduced to 1 HP (which by design can result from a single hit from many weapons) they may become incapacitated or they may take a Grievous Wound, which is a permanent injury with no stat benefits. Grievous Wounds don’t have to result from combat, they can also be given to a character during character creation, but not as a trade-off for an extra bonus.

“But then doesn’t my character just have worse stats than the rest of the party?” Yes, haven’t you been reading this? There is no benefit, except for the opportunity to play a disabled character in an TTRPG. This character will probably have to be more reliant on the rest of the party to get by in various situations. Is that a bad thing?

Monsters Essay

All investigators in Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy are regular people. They can also be a monster, like a blood-sucking vampire or a broom-riding witch. Importantly, this works because despite their unique nature, monsters are still regular people. You can read more about this in Chapter 8, but the setting of Eureka does not have a conspiracy or “masquerade” hiding supernatural people from normal society. Though they are still largely unknown to modern science, they exist within normal society - and a lot of them eat people.

The default assumption in RPGs has been that monsters are just evil by nature, doing evil for evil’s sake. RPGs that seek to subvert this expectation often instead make monsters misunderstood and wrongfully persecuted, but harmless. Eureka takes a wholly different approach.

There are five playable types of monsters in the rulebook right now, and it’ll be seven if we hit all the stretch goals, but for simplicity’s sake this discussion of themes will just focus on the vampire. Despite them applying in different ways, the same overall themes apply to nearly every monster, so if you get the themes for the vampire, you’ll get the gist of what Eureka is doing with its playable monsters in general.

Mundane investigators have to keep themselves going by eating food and sleeping (see p.XX “Composure” for more information). Well, vampires can’t operate the same way. They don’t sleep, and normal food might be tasty for them as long as it isn’t too heavily seasoned, but it doesn’t do anything for them nutritionally. Their main way to keep themselves functioning is fresh living human blood, straight from the source. To do what mundane PCs do normally by just eating and sleeping, vampires have to take from another, whether either of them are happy with this arrangement or not. They do not, of course, literally have to, and a player is not forced to make their vampire PC drink blood, just like you reading this in real life don’t literally have to eat food. You do eat food if you want to live in any degree of comfort or happiness, and vampires do drink blood or they eventually become unable to effectively do anything.

This is numerically, mechanically incentivized and not simply a rule that says something like “this character is a vampire and therefore they must drink blood once every session,” to demonstrate that the circumstances a person faces drive their behavior. In America, there is a tendency to think of criminality and harm done to others as resulting from intrinsic evil, but people do not just wake up one day and decide “I think I’ll go down the criminal life path.” Their circumstances have barred them from the opportunities that would have given them other options. 

People need food; food costs money; money requires work; work requires getting hired; but getting hired requires a nearby job opening, an education, an impressive resume, nice clothes, charisma, consistent transportation, and so on. For people without other options, crime becomes the only method left to meet their basic needs. Would you rather take what you need from other people, or go without what you need? There are people who don’t have the luxury of a third option. Failure to meet the needs of even a small number of people in a society has high potential to harm the entire society, not just those individuals whose needs are unmet.

As their basic need for blood becomes more and more difficult to ignore, a vampire is going to encounter much the same dilemma. There is really no “legal” or “harmless” way for them to get their needs met, even if they do have resources. Society just isn’t set up for that. And no, your kink is not the solution to this, trying to suggest every vampire just find willing participants who are turned on by vampires or being bitten is suggesting sex work. It’s one step removed from telling a girl she should just get an OnlyFans the minute she turns 18, or that women should just marry a rich man and be a housewife that gets their needs taken care of in exchange for sex and housekeeping. Being forced into such a dynamic isn’t ethical or harmless for the vampire or for their “clients.”

“Oh well, then the vampire should just eat bad people!” You mean those same bad people we just described above? Who gets to decide which people are “bad people?” Who gets to decide that the punishment is assault or death?

Playable monsters in Eureka are dangerous, harmful people. They were set up to be.

Society not being set up in a way that allows monsters to make ethical choices brings us to the next theme: monstrousness as disability, and monsters as “takers.”

Vampires have to take from others a valuable resource that everyone needs to live, and the extraction of which is excruciatingly painful and debilitating. No one knows what happens to blood after a vampire drinks it, it’s just gone. Vampires are open wounds through which blood pours out of the universe.

This is a special need, something they have to take but cannot give back. Their special needs make them literally a drain on society and the people around them. In the modern world, there is a tendency to feel that people must justify their right to life, that they must pay for the privilege of existing in society. This leads people to consider “takers” (people who take much more than they give back, such as disabled people) as something that needs to be pruned away for the betterment of everyone else. Even many so-called “progressives,” while they claim not to agree with pruning “useless eaters,” still hold the unexamined belief that people must justify their existence. To reconcile these two incompatible ideas, they instead simply deny that disabled people take more resources than most people, and are capable of giving back less. This sentiment is perfectly illustrated by the aforementioned game’s insistence that disabilities are never a net reduction of a character’s stats.

Vampires and other playable monsters are inarguably “takers,” but in positioning them as protagonists right alongside mundane protagonists, Eureka puts you in their shoes, and forces you to acknowledge their inner lives and reckon with their circumstances. You have to acknowledge two things: first, that they are dangerous, that they are harmful, that they take more than they give - and second, that they are people. Because they are people, Eureka asserts that they have inherent value, a right to exist, and a right to do what they need to do to exist. (We also acknowledge that their potential victims have a right to do what they need to do to exist and defend themselves, but that is a separate discussion.)

One final point to touch on is mental illness. Mental illness is a disability, one pretty comparable to physical disability in a lot of ways, so all of the above points can apply to this metaphor as well, but there are a few unique comparisons to make here.

It’s not the most efficient, but there are a couple of loopholes deliberately left in the rules that allow vampires to sometimes sporadically restore Composure (and thus their ability to function) without drinking blood. Eureka! moments and Comfort checks from fellow investigators can restore Composure.

When writing the rules, we came to a dilemma where we weren’t sure if it was thematically appropriate for monsters to be able to regain Composure in these ways (since it could lessen their reliance on causing harm), but ultimately we decided that yes, they can.

People with mental illnesses may have the potential to be harmful and dangerous, but all the information we have access to has shown that mentally ill people with robust support structures and control over their own lives are much less likely to enact harm, whether through physical violence, relational violence, or violence against the self. This is why we kept that rule in for playable monsters. Being able to accomplish their goals, and having friends who are there for them, makes that person less likely to cause unnecessary harm.

Vampires are especially great for demonstrating this because they’re immortal and they always come back when “killed.” They can’t be exterminated, they aren’t going away, there will always be problem people in society, no matter how utopian or “progressive.” Vampires are a never-ending curse, who will always be a problem whether they like it or not. The question is how you will grapple with their inevitable presence in society and how you will treat them, not how you will get rid of them.

Eureka is as much a study of the characters themselves as it is the mystery being solved by the characters. It is a game about harsh realities, but it is ultimately compassionate. It argues through its own gameplay that yes, people do have circumstances which drive their behavior, people do have special needs that are beyond their ability to reciprocate, many of those people do cause harm or inconvenience to others, and all of them are still valuable. 

Elegantly designed and thoroughly playtested, Eureka represents the culmination of three years of near-daily work from our team, as well as a lot of our own money. If you’re just now reading this and learning about Eureka for the first time, you missed the crowdfunding window unfortunately, but you can still check out the public beta on itch.io to learn more about what Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy actually is, as that is where we have all the fancy art assets, the animated trailer, links to video reviews by podcasts and youtubers, etc.!

You can also follow updates on our Kickstarter page where we post regular updates on the status of our progress finishing the game and getting it ready for final release.

Beta Copies through the Patreon

If you want more, you can download regularly updated playable beta versions of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy earlier, plus extra content such as adventure modules by subscribing to our Patreon at the $5 tier or higher. Subscribing to our patreon also grants you access to our patreon discord server where you can talk to us directly and offer valuable feedback on our progress and projects.

The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club

If you would like to meet the A.N.I.M. team and even have a chance to play Eureka with us, you can join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club discord server. It’s also just a great place to talk and discuss TTRPGs, so there is no schedule obligation, but the main purpose of it is to nominate, vote on, then read, discuss, and play different indie TTRPGs. We put playgroups together based on scheduling compatibility, so it’s all extremely flexible. This is a free discord server, separate from our patreon exclusive one. https://discord.gg/7jdP8FBPes

Other Stuff

We also have a ko-fi and merchandise if you just wanna give us more money for any reason.

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.